Jurgis

Barron's on the past weekend had an article about this too. The market is effectively valuing Vision Fund at -50B. I read Barron's article. I don't think it covered the Vision Fund pref issue. Although I cannot access the WSJ article UK has posted, the excerpt seems to cover the problems with prefs more than Barron's did. I am not denying that SOPT looks good. And I don't have a number to put on as Vision pref negative SOPT adjustment. ::)

What is the legality of buying stock of (Canadian) cannabis companies in US? Isn't it theoretically illegal although probably no one likely will enforce it in practice?

@thepupil: I think a lot hinges on the Vision Fund preferred shares payout. It seems that Softbank is on the hook to pay Vision Fund pref holders 7% annually irrespective of Vision Fund actual return. Which might be an issue if/when Vision fund does not return 7% (what if it returns -20%?). I don't know all the legalities of this and how Softbank has to cover this and can they refuse to pay without hurting Softbank itself. IMO though, any Softbank analysis has to understand the Vision Fund pref situation in depth.

Well, he is travelling with dogs on private jets, which should disseminate best practices and motivate employees, amirite? 8)

http://thenoobcomic.com/comic/312/

They are making device free. Not content.

Thanks. Bought it. I did too, started reading it this morning. I have seen Max Tegmark on shows about cosmology, math, etc. Yeah, I've heard some of his stuff. I also get his "Future of Life Institute" emails that discuss AI future/ethics/etc. (They also touch topics like autonomous weapons and nuclear weapons that belong more to Politics section).

I haven't read the article, but based on that quote, the premise seems to be false. This seems to equate engineering and innovation with big step changes. These are rare, and most of innovation and engineering has always been more iterative and incremental. Some look down on that, but that's where a lot of progress comes from, and the problems can be just as hard as anything out there even if the results aren't always as flashy. People overrated novelty, and underrate making stuff just better and cheaper and more efficient and scale... I think the point of the quote is that as management / ownership views engineering as more of a cost center and less of a source of revenue growth, they begin to minimize the importance and capital allocated to engineering, focusing instead on minimizing costs throughout the value chain to improve profitability. This.

Great article. But unfortunately it won't change a thing. Companies will continue to cut corners. Investors will continue to invest.

Thanks. Bought it.

One CoBF member has this in their signature: I wonder what Dan Gable thinks about colonoscopy. ::)

OT In reality it's the risks that you know about that are most likely to kill you. 8) But I think you knew that. 8)

More likely it will be called Corner of Berkshire Past. Fairfax has not done well. Berkshire after Buffett ... ??? Boston-Omaha is not something special and likely won't be. Tracy Co. - we'll see.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/04/an-artificial-intelligence-first-voice-mimicking-software-reportedly-used-major-theft/ https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/technology/artificial-intelligence-aristo-passed-test.html

Assigning an idea to the person who started a thread and assuming that this person invested/held that company since the thread start is really questionable methodology. After that GIGO.

It's good to be the king.

A good article. However, I think there's a fallacy about deposit stickiness at banks. The author is right about account stickiness: yes, people don't leave bank X because this means redoing all their auto-pay etc. But this does not mean money stickiness. I.e. you might have your account at bank X for all the bill pay/etc. But you can easily and painlessly transfer any extra money to other bank/broker/whatever that pays higher interest/etc. The e-services that author considers essential and credits for account stickiness make the money completely unsticky. And if you decide to move 80K out of 100K from bank X to whatever Y, this is likely a bigger hit to the bank than 8 people moving their 10K accounts to another bank. So money stickiness might matter more than account stickiness. And money is not sticky (with usual caveat about customer laziness, etc.). Not that this invalidates WFC investment thesis. 8)

And then there's BOMN. 8)

Fido now has a voluntary (?) split of IPOAU into stock/warrant parts. Is there a reason not to split it? Or does it become a forced split at some point?

Hold on. So Malone was selling LGF.A/B while LBTYA was buying LGF.A/B? Fun...

I'm on a desktop. The data can not be viewed properly without having to scroll through every page and having to collapse multiple items in the income statement, balance sheet and cash flow screens. It's completely cluttered. For example: I'm not interested in seeing how much of inventory consists of "raw materials", "work in process", "other", or "finished goods" when I'm looking for a quick snapshot of a company's financials. Of course, none of the things you deselect on a page are remembered by the site, so you have to go through this for every single company you look at. This redesign was clearly done by people who never actually use the site on a daily basis. I see. This does not bother me much, but I see what you mean. You can zoom out to get smaller font or set up a monitor in portrait mode. But if you are looking at a lot of companies it might be costing extra time and effort. I don't look at many companies so not a big deal for me. I also agree that it's mildly annoying that the main items like "Total Revenue" and "Net Income" are not highlighted and you have to look for the exact line out of 5 different "Net Income..." lines. Not a big deal for me, but yeah mildly annoying.

Morningstar: I checked it out on a browser where I am not logged in. What is the issue for you guys? You realize that you can click on "Income Statement", "Balance Sheet", "Cash Flow" and you get all the details for the last 5 years the same way you did before? The only thing I see is that there's no 10 year data, but it says that this is Premium account only. Are you unhappy that you cannot select the data and copy/paste it into Excel/etc? But they have "Export to Excel" button. So I guess I'm really confused about what people are unhappy about. The only difference I see is the font and I could quibble about the old font size being more readable across 10 years of data, but it's not a big deal. I still have old interface through Boston Public Library Morningstar access, but likely that's gonna change at some point too.

Well, I don't use makeup, so it's definitely a secular trend. 8) ::)

Fido has some 2023 at ~$45.

I miss Neverwinter. Great game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwinter_(video_game) We stopped playing somewhere between Curse of Icewind Dale and Tyranny of Dragons modules I think. There were way too many and too frequent FoTM items without which you could not compete.